


Call the Landlord

by performativezippers



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, HGTV (highly gay television), Home Improvement, Landlord/Tenant AU, Maggie in a toolbelt, Tank top porn, group houses are a nightmare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-06-24 09:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19720600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/performativezippers/pseuds/performativezippers
Summary: In which:--The Superfriends live in a group house,--Every time something breaks their beautiful landlord in toolbelt and a tank top comes over and fixes it, and--Alex can't quite figure out where her spleen has gone.





	Call the Landlord

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prettysky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettysky/gifts).



> Happy summer, @prettysky!!
> 
> Thank you for organizing this, Dani. You're the best.

It’s not that Alex doesn’t trust Kara with important stuff. Kara is technically almost fifty. She’s responsible for a whole lot of powers and secrets that she manages, at least relatively well, every single day of her life. Kara recently graduated from college with that fancy “cum laude” star beside her name.

Kara can handle herself. Mostly.

It’s just that…Alex can usually handle it…better. Kara slips up about the secrets, sometimes, but Alex never has. Alex graduated with a more strenuous degree from a more prestigious school, and had the fancier “summa cum laude” star next to her name. Alex has already finished her first two years of medical school and has just started her PhD coursework in bioengineering with a specialization in xenogenetics.

Alex is used to doing the clean-up, that’s all. She’s used to being the final check and balance to whatever Kara has agreed to in a fit of sunny enthusiasm.

But this time she couldn’t. She’d been stuck at a week of full-day lab sessions for her new program, so Kara had done this on her own. And this wasn’t picking a birthday present for Eliza or going to the outlet mall to buy a new professional wardrobe (no, Alex’d had pleasure of suffering through that seven-hour ordeal) or going on a first date.

This time, Kara – without any supervision – found, toured, picked, and signed a lease for their new apartment. Well, house. All on her own.

And now Alex is going to see it for the first time.

So anyone would excuse the nerves.

* * *

She drives into this cute little neighborhood tucked into the side of National City. It’s all small single-family homes; about half rentals and half owner occupied. The streets are tree-lined and quiet, and it has a sweet, suburban vibe even though it’s only a fifteen minute drive to downtown.

Alex immediately understands why Kara wanted to live here. The quiet, for someone with superhearing, will be deliciously relaxing after a long day of being screamed at by her new boss.

She pulls up to the address Kara had texted, and parks easily. Another boon. She gets out of the car and stares up at the house. It’s…adorable. Teal with purple trim, which should look garish but is instead beyond quaint. It’s two stories but with a sloped roof, meaning the second story will have some serious eaves, giving the whole structure a cute, sort of cottage vibe. The front lawn is perfectly manicured, but the steps up to the house show a bit of wear. It’s not a new house, but it looks well cared for.

Way to go, Kara.

“So,” says a sort of raspy voice behind her. Alex whirls around and sees a small woman, not too much older than herself, with dark hair, chestnut skin, and a worn leather jacket. The woman is grinning up at the house, and she takes one hand out of the front pocket of her jeans to gesture. “Whaddaya think?”

Alex can’t help the way her forehead crinkles. “Um, what?”

She’s pretty sure both of her new roommates are men, so this person isn’t likely to be Winn or James. She just hopes one of their new neighbors isn’t crazy.

“The house,” the possibly-crazy-but-very-beautiful-woman says. “Cute, right?”

Alex decides to play along until someone else shows up. Damn her constant promptness. She should have known Kara would be late. “Uh, oh, yeah. Very cute.” She nods, trying to sell it.

The woman just stares at her then, and Alex wonders if this is how she dies – stabbed by a stranger in the cutest neighborhood she’s ever been in.

The woman keeps smiling, and even though this is a perilous situation Alex notices that she has dimples.

She’s about to make an excuse to get back in her car and drive away when she hears the blessed sound of a car pulling up. Kara practically falls out of the passenger door the second it slows down, tripping over herself in her haste. “Hi,” she’s chirping, completely tangled in her seatbelt. “Hi, Alex, I’m so sorry we’re late!”

She’s being entirely strangled by the seatbelt now, but she’s beaming as she gestures wildly at the house. “Isn’t it adorable, Alex?”

Two boys are emerging from the car – one small, white, wiry, and nerdy, and the other tall, black, bald, and incredibly muscled. And then, as Kara seems to lose her battle against the tentacled seatbelt, a small woman in an incredibly fancy suit and stilettos unfolds from the backseat.

The boys must be Winn and James – she recognizes them from Kara’s pictures – but Alex doesn’t know who the girl is.

“Alex,” Kara says, still firmly ensconced in what must, in fact, be a Devil’s Snare masquerading as a seatbelt, “this is Winn! And James!”

Alex, rolling her eyes, walks over and pulls Kara out of danger.

“Honestly, Kara,” she mutters, quiet enough not to be overheard. “Be more obvious you don’t know how seatbelts work.”

Kara just snickers, celebrating her freedom by throwing her arms around Alex. “Welcome to our new house!” Then she pauses, pulling back from Alex a little, her arms still around Alex’s neck. “Wait, you like it, right?”

Alex does like it, and even if she didn’t, Kara’s pulled out her Level Ten Puppy Face and Alex doesn’t stand a chance. “I do,” she says quickly, reassuring. “It’s really cute, and this street is adorable.”

Kara’s grin makes the sun seem less bright in comparison. She legitimately squeals, and Alex pulls away with a laugh.

A voice from behind her says, “Just wait til you see the inside.”

Oh, shit. Alex had forgotten about the beautiful crazy lady, who is still there and has apparently been _inside_ their new house? That’s a problem.

But Kara is just bounding her over to her. She scoops the woman up in a hug, which seems entirely unexpected and largely unwelcome, eliciting a strange grunt from the woman.

“It’s so good to see you!” Kara is beaming, and the woman seems a bit shell-shocked.

Kara tends to have that effect on people.

“Alex, this is Mags! Our landlord!”

Oh. _Oh_. Shit.

Not a psychopath, then. Or, well, hopefully not.

The landlord.

Alex blinks.

Her only experience with landlords has been big evil corporations with interchangeable property managers, each more inept than the last. She’s never had a human as a landlord before, and certainly never a human so young. Or so pretty.

She blinks again. The landlord, however, doesn’t seem to be as surprised by her own existence. She holds out a hand, and even that single move contains more confident swagger than Alex will ever have in her life. “Maggie Sawyer,” she says, “but you can call me Mags.”

Alex shakes her hand, suddenly so preoccupied by making sure that her hand isn’t oddly damp that she forgets to say her own name for a while.

“Uh, Alex,” she manages about four seconds too late. “Nice to meet you.”

Mags gives her a little tilt of her head and a smile that looks like a question, and Alex wonders why her spleen is moving freely throughout her torso.

Kara doesn’t seem to notice. “Mags, you’ve met Winn and James.” Mags nods, slipping her hand out of Alex’s and turning to the boys, nodding in greeting. “And this is Lucy, James’ girlfriend.” Kara says, pulling the other woman forward. “Our fifth roommate.”

“Your what?”

“Our WHAT?”

Kara stutters a little, pulling up short in the face of Alex’s Level Ten Death Glare.

Mags recovers quickest. “I approved a rental for four tenants. Not five.”

James and Lucy quickly look between themselves. Winn looks a little like he might pass out.

“Oh,” Kara says, fidgeting with her hands. “Well, um, we…”

Alex pinches the bridge of her nose. Fucking Kara. So close, and then…bust.

Alex snaps into clean-up big sister mode.

She lets out a loud exhale and then turns to Mags. “What would you need for us to have a fifth? A rent increase? A bigger security deposit?”

Mags is chewing on her inside lip. “I mean, there were other people interested in the house…”

Winn moans out loud, and Kara takes in a sharp breath.

But Alex just straightens her spine. “Yes, but they’re not here now, and we are. It’ll be a bigger hassle for all of us to start over, instead of finding a way to make this work. It’s a four bedroom house, right?”

Mags nods. She looks like she’s going to say something, but Alex bulldozes over her. “Okay, so, that’s just one bedroom with double occupancy. That’s got to be pretty standard, right? I mean, you can’t _only_ rent to single people, right?”

Mags blinks. Alex takes that as a yes. She presses forward. “How about another $300 in the security deposit, and $50 more per month?”

Someone makes a sound behind her, but Alex ignores them. She’s going to murder them all later, so it doesn’t matter if they’re pissed at her now.

Mags sighs, but nods. “Fine,” she says, but the grin and dimple are suspiciously absent. “Fine.”

* * *

She shows them the inside of the house. It’s just as cute as the outside. A cozy living room space opening into a dining room, which connects to a pretty decent kitchen. Two bedrooms and one bathroom downstairs, and another set of bedrooms with a connecting bathroom upstairs. An unfinished basement downstairs with an old washer dryer, and a beautiful big backyard with the same manicured grass as the front.

The house is great, but it’s tense now. Between Mags and the tenants, between Lucy and James, between Alex and everyone.

At the end of the tour, James writes a check for the additional security deposit and the increase to the first and last month’s rent. Mags hands over the keys and leaves without much of a goodbye.

It’s quiet for a moment, and then Alex can’t keep it in any longer.

“What the **_hell_** , Kara?”

Kara shirks back, but Alex is pissed enough to not care. “A fifth roommate? Are you serious?”

Kara opens her mouth but Alex isn’t done. “Forget not telling me, or, I don’t know, even _asking_ me. But not telling the landlord? We all ended our leases for this, Kara! Did you even think about what we would have done if she’d said no?”

“But she said yes!”

Alex wants to scream. “That’s not the point!”

“Isn’t it? It all worked out!”

“No, Kara, it didn’t! Now she hates us, and now we have a fucking surprise fifth roommate!”

That seems to be the last straw for the rest, though. James makes a sound, but Lucy holds up a hand to silence him, stepping forward. “The fifth roommate has a name, you know.”

Her voice is measured, but Alex can tell she’s pissed.

“Look,” Lucy says, “I know that was stressful, but it’s fine now. Mags will get over it.”

“How about we all start over?” James’ voice is soft and firm, and Alex can already tell he’s going to be playing peacemaker a lot in this house. “Alex, this is my girlfriend, Lucy. She just moved from Metropolis to be with me, and we decided it wasn’t worth it to pay for two separate places.”

“Fine,” Alex grits out. “Kara, why don’t we go upstairs and decide who is going to have which room?”

“Oh,” Kara says awkwardly. “Um, since the upstairs rooms are a little bigger, I’d thought that maybe James and Lucy would take one…”

But Alex is not having that. “No,” she says. She’s not here to make friends. She’s here to live while she’s in graduate school. “I agreed to live in a house with you instead of an apartment on the conditions that my room was big enough to study in, far from the living room, and that I’d only share a bathroom with you. That means you and I live upstairs.” She snaps into Level Ten Serious Older Sister. “Otherwise, I’m out, Kara. That’s non-negotiable for me, and you know it.”

“It’s fine,” James says quickly, clearly smelling blood. “We’ll take a room down here with Winn. Seriously. It’s good.”

Well now Alex looks like the bitch. But, whatever. This whole situation is James and Lucy’s fault.

Alex nods, going for grateful but only succeeding in grudging, and she goes upstairs.

She can hear Kara apologizing for her, and she lets out a puff of air.

Why the fuck did she agree to a group house, again?

* * *

Things settle down a little, but they’re still tense. Lucy clearly hates Alex, and Alex can’t bring herself to care much. Lucy’s just started law school and clearly thinks her school is the hardest it can get, and she’s pretty obnoxiously into herself and into how she looks with James. She’s constantly taking selfies of them to post on Facebook, and sitting on his lap on the couch, and otherwise rubbing their relationship into the faces of all the sad singles.

Plus, within the first few days Alex realizes that Winn is desperately into Kara, and Kara is desperately into James, and Alex is desperately too old for any of this shit.

Alex’s coursework is already kicking her butt. She’s hardly ever home, and when she is, the others tend to also be home, and are either loud or snubbing her.

It’s great.

* * *

About one month in, the dishwasher starts making a very unfortunate sound. Loud and grating, and clearly unhealthy. Winn volunteers to pull it apart, but Alex puts the kibosh on that immediately.

She’s learned from the evil corporations that it’s always best to let someone else pull the machines apart so they can’t blame you if they’re too inept to put it back together properly.

Kara texts Mags about it, and Alex assumes it’ll be weeks before the issue is resolved.

But Mags is there within two hours.

No leather jacket and skinny jeans this time. Instead she’s wearing looser work jeans – made of real heavy-duty denim – slung low across her hips, and a red flannel open over a black tank top. Oh, and an honest-to-god toolbelt.

Alex isn’t quite sure why, but she finds herself drooling.

Mags pulls her hair up into a ponytail as Kara and Winn both talk a mile a minute at her, going as far as to harmonize in their impression of the sound. Taking pity on her, Alex finally shoos both of them out of the kitchen, banishing them to the backyard.

“Sorry about them,” she says, still extremely nervous about pissing Mags off. “It’s like having two chihuahuas around, sometimes.”

Mags laughs at that, and oh, Alex hasn’t heard her laugh before. It’s an extremely good sound. She swallows, her throat suddenly feeling a little thick.

She’s weirdly thirsty. “Uh, can I get you some water, or something? Or, um, beer? It’s after noon, right?”

Mags gives her that smile again, the one that’s asking a question that Alex can’t begin to answer. “Water would be great,” Mags finally says. “Let’s save the beer for after.”

Alex had worked in the clinic during medical school, and had sliced open three people and inserted more than ten needles for IV lines, but her hand shakes while she’s getting the water for Mags.

She leans against the counter, trying not to watch as Mags sheds her flannel before taking a drink, the water sliding down her throat while her biceps and deltoids flex.

Alex feels dizzy. She wonders if there’s a gas leak.

Before she knows it, Mags is crouching down, opening the dishwasher and poking around inside with confident movements. Alex wonders if she should leave her to it, but then, without turning away from the machine, Mags throws a question over her shoulder.

“So, Alex. What do you do?”

Alex sputters. All she’s been _doing_ for the last few minutes is staring and swallowing.

“Like, for work.” Mags is clearly smiling, and something inside of Alex tightens. She wonders if it’s her spleen finally going back where it belongs.

She must be silent for too long again. “You know, the rent money you pay me?” Mags looks over her shoulder now, and she’s full-on grinning, and her dimple is clearly mocking Alex. “Where do you get it?”

Alex manages to roll her eyes. “I’m a graduate student,” she finally says.

Mags snorts. “And that pays your rent?”

Alex chokes a little, trying and failing to pass it off as a laugh. “Well, split five ways, yeah.”

Mags nods, turning back to the dishwasher. Alex, not ready to be banished to the backyard with the chihuahuas, desperately offers more. “I’m getting a joint MD/PhD,” she word-vomits. “And I’m fully funded, so, it’s actually not too bad. Financially, I mean.”

Mags lets out a low whistle, easily shifting her body so that she’s laying down on the floor, her head under the sink. She’s craning her neck up, and Alex can see her abs working, and, oh no. She’s forgotten how to move air in and out of her lungs. “An MD and a PhD? Damn, girl.”

Alex makes a little noise because she’s also been thinking _damn girl_ but she isn’t quite sure why and she’s very sure she should not say it out loud.

“What’s your PhD in?”

“Oh, um, bioengineering.”

Mags hums a little. Alex can’t see her face, which means Mags can’t see Alex’s face, which means Alex gives herself full permission to stare at where Mags’ tank top disappears into the top of her jeans.

“What, um, what about you?” Alex asks her lower abdominals. “Do you, um…work? Or just, you know? This…type of work?”

She’s a mess and she knows it, but it’s so unlike how she normally is that the knowledge is only making her messier.

“I’m working as a contractor right now,” Mags says, hopefully not offended. “I’m redoing another house in the neighborhood. After I sell that, though, I’m not sure. I might stay in real estate construction, but I’m also considering social work.”

“Oh,” Alex says, her gaze now somehow trapped on the small rise of Mags’ chest. She wonders faintly what kind of bra Mags is wearing. “Social work would be…different.”

Mags chuckles. “Yeah, I know. I wanted to be a cop when I was a kid, but now, I don’t know. I want to help people, but it seems like cops are mostly hurting people, you know?”

Alex nods before she remembers that Mags can’t see her. “Yeah, it really does.”

Mags scoots out from under the sink, easily popping back up her feet and reaching into the dishwasher with a wrench. Her triceps are stretching and flexing as she twists something that Alex can’t see.

“But, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about getting my MSW and then starting to bring in teenagers to learn construction. Teach them a trade, help support them, you know. Give them a purpose and a way to make money.”

The twenty percent of Alex’s brain that’s still working is impressed. “That’s awesome. Like an apprenticeship,” she says.

“Yeah, totally.” Mags stands up, slipping her wrench back into her toolbelt. “Like an old-timey blacksmith or some shit.”

Alex grins. “Exactly.”

Mags closes the dishwasher and presses start. It gurgles, smooth and quiet. No grating, no clanging.

“All fixed,” she announces with a grin, but Alex’s brain is way more broken than before.

* * *

The downstairs shower clogs.

Mags comes over that afternoon, toolbelt firmly in place. Alex doesn’t even use the downstairs shower and she has an exam the next day, but she spends thirty minutes perched primly on the closed toilet, making small talk with Mags while she snakes, unclogs, cleans, and tests the drain.

She’s wearing a shirt with sleeves today, but they’re rolled up to above her elbows and Alex has never really thought about forearms before, but today she can’t stop staring.

* * *

The back burner on the stove doesn’t light, but they don’t figure it’s worth calling Mags for it. It isn’t until she’s there, fixing a broken post on the back fence, that Winn mentions it offhand. Mags looks directly at Alex and tuts. “You should have called,” she says.

“We didn’t want to bother you,” Alex says, and they’re standing out in the sun and the light makes Mags’ skin glow.

Mags pulls her sunglasses up off her face, and her eyes are both light and serious. “You’re not a bother, Alex.” Her voice is soft and gentle, and it feels a little bit like being hugged on a cold night. “Besides, it’s literally my job.”

She walks past Alex, and she brushes her forearm softly against Alex’s. “Call me, next time.”

Alex stays outside for so long that she gets a sunburn.

* * *

She takes Mags at her word.

She texts when the toilet is running for longer than it should, when part of the kitchen counter starts to peel, when the wheel on one of the trash cans breaks.

Mags comes promptly, each time, toolbelt slung across her hips. She always – confidently, expertly, efficiently – fixes the problem.

Alex finds herself wishing that she weren’t quite so efficient. She never needs to come back with another part, or to try something else. Her visits rarely last more than half an hour.

She’s an impressive mix of electrician, plumber, and handyman. Handywoman? Well, anyway, she makes anything she puts her hands on positively sing, and Alex finds herself strangely jealous of toilets and drains and fences.

* * *

Mags comes by to pick up a piece of equipment that she’s stored in the garage. One of the conditions of the lease was that about half the garage would remain filled with Mags’ construction supplies, and they can use what’s left for storage.

Mags texts Alex that she’ll be coming over to pick up her power sander at six that night, and Alex nearly pulls a muscle making sure she’s home on time.

She helps Mags lift the sander into the back of her old pickup, although of course Mags is doing most of the lifting and Alex seems to be there more for moral support than for physical strength. Mags can clearly handle it all herself.

But Alex doesn’t want to see her go so soon – she’ll be working past midnight tomorrow to make up for leaving so early today – so she offers Mags a beer, and this time Mags says yes.

Alex slips inside, grateful that they only have one type of beer right now so she doesn’t have to spend priceless seconds agonizing over what Mags might want. She grabs two Fat Tires and a jar of salsa from the fridge, silently apologizing as she snags a bag of Winn’s tortilla chips out of his secret stash in the bottom corner of the pantry on her way back outside.

They sit on the front step, and Alex fusses over the chips for a while in an attempt to keep herself from staring as Mags closes her eyes in bliss at the beer, her throat moving gently as she swallows, her wrists and forearms flexing as she moves the bottle from hand to hand.

“How’s the other house going?” Alex figures that’s a safe subject.

Mags shrugs. “Good, I think? I don’t really know. It’s my first complete renovation totally on my own. Some days I think it’s going great, and others…” She takes a sip, like maybe she’s trying to compose herself. “Other days I’m pretty sure I’m ruining everything, and that I’m gonna end up selling it for a loss, and I’ll have to move back in here and be poor forever.”

Alex knits her eyebrows a little. “You’re so great around here, though,” she says. “I can’t imagine you aren’t doing a good job. No way will you take a loss.”

Mags gives her a little half-smile, one dimple almost peeking out. “I appreciate the vote of confidence,” she says. “But it’s…it’s a huge job. Bigger than I’d realized at first. It’s been pretty overwhelming.”

Alex hums. She has a pet alien and is getting an MD/PhD in a field that only sort of exists and her dad died under mysterious circumstances before she got her driver’s license. Alex knows about overwhelming.

“Did you work on this house?” She gestures with her beer bottle. “Because it’s so beautiful, and well done.”

Mags smiles for real at that. “Yeah. I mean, kind of. It wasn’t a huge gut job, like the other one. But I worked on it for like a decade as I was learning, and then I did a big overhaul a few years ago.”

Alex tilts her head a little bit, working it out. “Did you grow up here?”

She’d thought it was a simple question, but Mags spends a couple seconds picking chip crumbs off her jeans. “Um, sort of,” she finally says. “This was my aunt’s house. I moved in with her for high school, and then spent summers and stuff here later. She left it to me when she died.”

Alex wants to say something comforting, but she doesn’t know what. _Sorry for your loss_ is what everyone had said when her dad died and she hated it. _My condolences_ is worse. _Sorry your aunt is dead_ is the truth but too abrupt, and something like _were you close?_ is weird and invasive.

“What was she like?” she finally asks. “Your aunt.”

That must have been okay, because Mags gets this wry little smile. “Oh, she was really something,” she says, going for another chip. “And she was a saint for putting up with me. I started working in construction when I was fifteen, and she came home one day and I’d pulled up half the ugly carpet in the living room.”

“Oh my god.”

Mags nods, laughing. “I was _sure_ there was hardwood underneath. I’d learned on the job, there’s always hardwood underneath.”

Alex laughs. “Was there?”

Mags points a finger at her. “You know what, Alex Danvers, there fucking _was_ hardwood underneath!”

Alex whoops and Mags laughs. “But my tía, you know, she was so mad. And I was like ‘But Tía, mira, this beautiful hardwood!’ and she goes, ‘I know there’s wood, idiota, but I like the carpet! I’m old! Don’t change things in an old lady’s house!’”

Alex snorts. “So what happened?”

Mags takes a swig of her beer. “I learned how to re-install carpet, that’s what happened.”

* * *

Her bedroom window has started to rattle. It’s not a huge problem but it’s annoying. She has her huge end-of-year exams coming up in two weeks, and she’s barely home, and she needs to be able to sleep during the few precious hours she has.

She texts Mags at 3am, awake and glaring at the ceiling.

Mags is there at 8am. She’s holding a thermos of coffee and wearing a white t-shirt and what looks like fashionable sweatpants, or maybe loose warm ups.

Alex brings her upstairs to show her the window, and it’s the first time Mags has been in her bedroom. Alex pulls at the sleeves of her sweater. She’s flooded with absurd anxiety at the knowledge that Mags is inside the same room as her _underwear_.

Mags looks over at her desk, piled high with study materials and text books and equations. “Dang,” she says. “This looks intense.” She runs her finger over a study guide. “Synthetic Biology and Metabolic Engineering,” she reads. She looks up at the calendar Alex has tacked up above her bulletin board, the one that lists all her courses for the year. “Optimal Parameter Estimation and Experiment Design for Biomedical Systems,” she reads. “Neural Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine. Physical Chemistry of Biomacromolecules.” She looks over at Alex. “Geez, Alex, didn’t you want to try taking any of the hard classes?”

Alex laughs. “Maybe next year.”

Mags shakes her head a little. “Biomacromolecules,” she says again. “That’s like German, where they put all the little words together into one enormous word.”

Alex nods. “It’s kind of ridiculous. Same number of syllables as ‘unfuckingbelievable,’ which is basically what the class is.”

Mags snorts – actually, legitimately, snorts in laughter.

She walks over to the troublesome window, still chortling.

Alex wonders what the physical chemistry of her biomacromolecules are, because all of her cells are currently on fire.

Mags fixes the window quickly and efficiently, through the simple expedient of shoving a line of foam between the sill and the pane.

That window has been rattling her awake for _weeks_. “Unfuckingbelievable,” Alex mutters, and Mags cracks up again.

She walks back up to Alex, and Alex can smell her and feel the heat of her skin. And Alex’s spleen is wiggling all over the place, and she sees herself reaching out, pulling a flake of something out of Mags’ hair. “You had some…plaster, or something,” she finds herself whispering.

Mags grins, her dimples deep and permanent, her head tilted, her eyes no longer asking a question. “My hero,” she says, and Alex surely can’t breathe.

“Mags,” she croaks, but Mags just smiles at her.

“I know,” she says, and Alex has no idea what Mags is talking about, because Alex has not known one single thing since that first day outside the house.

And then Mags has her hands on Alex’s hips, and she’s taking one more half step in, and she’s right there, and Alex finds her own hands resting on those perfect forearms.

Mags leans in, and Alex should have expected it. Should have been expecting it since that day in the kitchen months ago, since before that. Since she was born, maybe.

But Alex has been a little too blind, a little too sure, a little focused on other things.

So Mags leans in, and Alex feels nothing but surprise when Mags kisses her.

Nothing but surprise, but then Mags does something with her lips and suddenly Alex is on fire. Like the dishwasher, her mind stops rattling. Unclogged, moving easily in her tracks, rolling smoothly forward. Alex, like the house, is perfectly and efficiently fixed.

No longer surprised, she’s now on fire.

Alex makes a little sound, and she holds tight to Mags’ strong arms, and she pulls herself closer, and she kisses her back.

* * *

Alex wakes up, confused and disoriented. Light is streaming in through the windows, so it’s daytime. Alex never sleeps during the day.

She’s also on top of her covers, with the spare blanket from the foot of the bed over herself. Why on earth? She’s never done that in her twenty-four years of life.

She’s also, she realizes with a jolt, butt-ass naked.

And that’s the fact that turns her brain back on.

Mags.

Mags kissed her, right there, next to her desk. Mags kissed her, and Alex kissed her back.

They made out, by the desk. Then near the bed. Then on the bed. Then in the bed.

Then naked.

Then they had sex. Or, well, Alex isn’t exactly sure what sex is between two women, but she’s pretty sure she _came_ , so, yeah.

She buries her face in her hands. She’s never done that with a boy, before. She’s had plenty of sex, and she’s never…done that. That makes this all significantly more confusing.

She doesn’t remember anything after that. Something about Mags’ arms around her, and Alex remembers whining something, and Mags kissing her hair, maybe saying _next time_?

And now Mags is gone and Alex is alone, naked and confused.

She’s a bit lost in the memories of what happened earlier that her brain doesn’t completely reboot until a door slams downstairs. She jumps, and then it comes rushing back to her.

“Shit!” She leaps out of bed, tripping over her clothes in a pile on the floor. She flings herself into the shower, ignoring her hair in favor of trying to scrub the smell of sex off her skin under the frigid water. She’s downstairs in five minutes, skidding out the front door and into her car.

She fell asleep after having unplanned and unprotected sex with a near stranger, and she slept for hours in the middle of the day. She entirely missed her lab, and she’s going to miss more than half of her study session.

Her PI is going to absolutely murder her.

She’s going to murder herself.

* * *

Alex throws herself into her exams.

Mags texts, but Alex doesn’t answer.

Mags is a distraction. A confusing, confuddling, _female_ distraction. If Alex thinks about Mags, then she has to think about what they did, which means she has to think about the G word, or maybe the L word, and that’s a hole so deep and dangerous that she’ll never emerge in time for her exams.

So she doesn’t answer her texts and she basically moves into the library and she washes her sheets and she doesn’t talk to anyone.

* * *

Kara flutters around her, clucking like a hen, trying to get her to eat, or sleep, or drink water. Lucy shoots her daggers when Alex is up too early in the morning, claiming that the smell of coffee wakes her up and that she needs her rest because law school is even harder than Alex’s program. Winn has started hiding his snacks and video games in the unfinished basement so as not to get on her bad side, and James tries to herd everyone out of the house whenever Alex is home.

It’s amazing.

Alex loves it. Group living. Amazing.

* * *

She finishes her exams on Thursday. She spends Friday on campus, cleaning out her lab and closing out the year. She’ll be working over the summer, of course, but in a different lab on a different project. And she has an entire week off, starting now.

She hasn’t had an entire week off in years. She has no idea what to do with herself.

She comes home on Friday at 4, and it’s finally May and the sun is finally staying up until 7:30, and Kara meets her in the kitchen with a hug. She thrusts a beer in Alex’s hand, tells her that everyone is in the backyard, and that she needs to be social (and nice, she adds with a Level Two Stern Face) to make up for terrorizing their roommates the last few weeks.

And Alex is a big enough person to admit that she’s been a nightmare, so she takes the beer and she follows her sister out into the sunshine.

Kara pulls over an Adirondack chair for Alex, and it’s only when Alex notices that Lucy’s sitting on James’ lap (barf) that she looks around, doing the math. They should have one extra chair, but…oh.

Mags is here, sitting in the green chair like she owns it.

Or, well. Right. She does own it, technically.

Mags is there, sitting in the green chair like she belongs there, with them. Like Alex’s physical presence isn’t a surprise or a disruption.

Like nothing happened, up in Alex’s bedroom, next to the desk or on the bed.

“Um,” Alex says, almost dropping her beer bottle in surprise, the condensation making it sweaty and slippery in her palm. “Hi.”

Mags just raises her own beer in acknowledgement, and Alex hates her in that moment for being so impossibly cool. Alex is a fucking _mess_ – has been since day one – and Mags is entirely unflappable. It’s unfuckingbelievable.

Alex sits down on her chair, letting everyone else resume their conversation. She chimes in when Kara’s glares get particularly intense, and she doesn’t let herself look at Mags.

It’s awkward and painful and Alex doesn’t feel like any of the stress from exams has gone away.

Happy fucking summer, indeed.

* * *

Alex is struggling with the lawn mower. It’s a push mower, not electric, like from the turn of the century or some shit. Mags claims that it works great, but that they need to be doing a better job at upkeeping the lawn.

And it’s Alex’s week off, so it’s her turn.

But this fucking mower sucks. Alex is in pretty good physical shape, but this thing is a _workout_. She’s about to call it a day, when she hears that fucking voice from behind her.

“If you guys cut the grass more often, it wouldn’t be so hard.”

Alex grits her teeth before turning around. “If you didn’t have George Washington’s hand-me-down lawn mower, it also wouldn’t be so hard.”

Mags almost laughs, but then she pulls her lips in.

Alex goes back to pushing the mower, but she only makes it about two steps before Mags says something that stops her in her tracks.

“You know, it’s a little fucked up that you’re the one being a bitch to me.”

Alex gapes. What the fuck is wrong with her? She feels her rage clicking into focus, but Mags keeps talking.

“I mean, you didn’t need to want to be my girlfriend or whatever, but you’re the one who didn’t call me back, Alex. You’re out here acting all self-righteous, like the jilted lover or some shit, but you’re the one who turned me down.”

Alex desperately looks up at the house, making sure Kara’s window is closed. Although, of course, the superhearing renders the window pane a bit useless.

But Mags catches it. “What? Don’t want your roommates to know you were slumming it with the landlord?”

Alex snaps her head over. “What?”

Mags sneers. “I may not be a double doctor, or whatever, but I’m not trash, okay? I have a college degree. I own my own business. I own this fucking house, you know.”

That is…she’s so wrong that Alex wants to laugh. The idea that Mags wouldn’t be good enough for Alex? Preposterous.

But it’s so ridiculous that Alex can’t find the words, and Mags clearly takes that for agreement.

“That’s fucked up, Alex,” she says, already walking away. “I didn’t take you for a total fucking snob. Have a nice life, okay? Tell your sister to be in touch if the house needs anything.”

And then she’s gone, and Alex has only mowed two thin lines in the grass, but she leaves the mower where it is, and she goes inside, and she gets very quickly and efficiently drunk.

* * *

Kara drags her out the next night, along with the rest of the housemates. She’s clearly trying to make peace, and Alex is too miserable and confused to say no.

They go to Dots, a very strange bar that only serves pitchers of PBR and Thai wings and has black velvet wallpaper. It’s cheap and a bit grungy and the service is terrible, and for some reason Kara and Winn love it.

Lucy looks like she wants to run screaming out of it, and Alex can’t help but snicker. She’d like to like Lucy, but something about her always seems like she’s hoping Alex gets sent to secret prison, and she’s just annoying.

Plus, James and Kara would make a super cute couple, and Kara is clearly not over him, and Alex is nothing if not a good big sister, so she’ll root for the catastrophic breakup anytime.

They order a pitcher and a platter, and as they’re waiting an excruciatingly long time for them to be dropped off at the table, Winn is craning his head around. “Hey,” he says, suddenly chipper despite his previous moans of low blood sugar, “Isn’t that Mags?”

He points over to the corner, where someone who is very clearly Mags is very clearly on a date with someone who is very clearly a woman and very clearly not Alex. The woman is blonde and tall and pretty in a cheerleader way, and as they’re all looking, Mags leans in and gives her a quick kiss on the lips.

“Helloooo!” Lucy says with a bit of a grin. “Get it.”

Winn turns back to the table, eyes wide. “I didn’t…did you guys know?”

“What, that she’s gay?” James shrugs. “I mean, she didn’t say it, but yeah. It’s pretty obvious.”

Kara nods. “The flannel, Winn,” she tells him sagely.

“And the short nails. And the pants. And the walk. And the tool belt.” Lucy ticks them off on her fingers. “Oh, and the fact that she slept with Alex, that’s a bit of a hint.”

Winn nearly topples out of the booth. James makes a strangled noise, and Kara lets out a bolt of laughter. “What! Nope, Luce, didn’t happen.”

But Alex is frozen. Still. Her spleen is stuck somewhere in her esophagus. Her neural tissue is completely eradicated. Someone had been home, that morning. Someone had slammed a door. And Alex isn’t sure, but she guesses that she and Mags weren’t particularly quiet. The window had definitely been open.

“Alex,” Kara says, still laughing, “tell her!”

Alex had slept with a woman and Lucy had heard and now Lucy has told everyone and Mags is over in the corner kissing another woman.

“Oh, fuck.” Lucy is looking at Alex in a panic, her eyes wide, her face white. “Alex, fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t…shit. I’m sorry.” She looks desperately at Kara. “I was kidding. It was a joke.”

But Alex is ashen and staring and Lucy is freaked and stammering and it’s beyond obvious, even to Winn, that Lucy hadn’t been kidding.

Kara turns to Alex, at a Level Ten Confusion. “Alex?”

Alex swallows, hard and heavy. The waiter finally comes over, dropping the pitcher off with such force that some beer sloshes onto Alex’s pants. She gets up, mechanically heading to the bathroom to get cleaned up.

After a moment, the door swings open. Alex assumes it’s Kara, here to interrogate her, but it’s Lucy.

She doesn’t have the energy to tell her to get out.

“Alex,” Lucy’s hands are up and out, in clear surrender. “I’m so sorry. I really thought everyone knew. I thought you were out. I’m so…I would never had said, if I’d known. I’m really—I’m so sorry.”

Alex nods a little. Lucy is self-absorbed and self-important, but she’s not a bad person. “Why did you…why did you think that? That I was…”

Lucy shifts, leaning one hip against the sink. “Honestly?” Alex nods. “I just…you just seem really gay. Especially around Mags. It’s like, you forget to talk. I figured they all knew.”

Alex shakes her head, a bit of a rueful half smile. “They didn’t. I mean, they couldn’t have.”

Lucy’s not an idiot. “You didn’t?”

Alex shakes her head again. Nope, she sure didn’t.

“So what happened with Mags?”

It feels good to talk about it, although Alex never pictured it happening like this. In the weird, dim, velvet bathroom of Dots, pants covered in PBR, with _Lucy_. “I just…we slept together,” she admits. “And then I fell asleep, and I missed a lab, and I freaked out. And then she yelled at me.”

Lucy’s eyebrow twitches. “For freaking out?”

“No…well, I don’t know. For not answering her calls, I guess.”

Lucy pauses for a second. “Did she know?” she asks softly. “That she was your first girl?”

Alex purses her lips a little. “No. We didn’t…there wasn’t a lot of, um…talking?”

Lucy sniggers. “Yeah, been there. But, uh, I think you should tell her. Just explain it. She’ll get it.”

“She hates me. And she’s clearly over it.” Alex gestures to the rest of the bar, where Mags and her future wife are probably making out on top of the bar.

“Still,” Lucy says, pulling a couple paper towels from the dispenser and handing them to Alex. “I think it would help.”

Alex dabs at the beer covering her legs. “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe.”

* * *

She finds Mags’ other house through a simple google search. It’s Wednesday and it’s a heat wave and it’s impossibly hot and Alex is miserable. She can’t sleep. She keeps picturing Mags using her muscular forearm to work inside of that blonde from the bar, just like how she’d worked inside Alex. She pictures Mags leaning over that girl, whispering encouragement in her ear, her deltoids flexing and sweaty, just like she’d leaned over Alex.

It’s somewhere between horrible and hot, and it’s distracting, and Alex doesn’t exactly plan to do it, but she’s always been a little bit impulsive, and so she finds herself at Mags’ other house.

She knocks on the front door, but no one answers. She walks around to the back, and she finds Mags inside the house, the back door open, measuring the floor. The house is gutted – walls open to the studs, the floor covered in a mix of protective sheeting and fallen plaster. Mags has a few streaks of plaster in her hair and one across her collarbone. She’s wearing a white tank top and those same heavy denim jeans, her toolbelt in place, and she looks so good that Alex might die.

She looks up at Alex’s tentative knock against the doorframe. “Alex,” she says, a little stiffly, the measure tape whipping back into place with a painful snap. “What are you doing here?”

Alex would love to have some casual conversation first, to ask about the house, or the blonde from the bar. But she opens her mouth and what comes out is, “I didn’t know that I liked girls, until you.”

For the first time ever, Alex sees Mags stand completely still. She’s always in motion, always efficiently moving through space, but this second she’s like marble. “What?” she finally manages to croak.

“I thought I liked boys. But then I met you, and you’re so…” she gestures futilely at Mags, as though there are words or motions that encompass how life-shatteringly perfect Mags is. “And I just…I didn’t get it, but I wanted it. And then you kissed me, and then we…” she swallows, not quite able to say it. “And it was exams, and I was so stressed, and I fell asleep, and I missed lab and I got in so much trouble.”

“Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

Alex stops her, one hand up. “No, I’m not…I’m not blaming you. I don’t blame you. I just…I freaked out. it was all really new and scary and I couldn’t deal with it and with exams at the same time, and so I just…didn’t.”

Mags is looking at her with something like sympathy, or maybe kindness. “I get it, Alex. That’s a lot.”

Alex shakes her head. “Yeah, but, still. I treated you like shit, and I’m sorry. And it…it wasn’t that you weren’t good enough for me.” She scoffs. “God, I mean, it’s the opposite. I don’t…I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even touch you back before I fell asleep.”

But Mags grins at that. “I took it as a compliment,” she says, and Alex blushes down to her ribs.

“I just…I’m sorry. And I know you’re with someone else now, so it’s whatever, I just…wanted to say it.”

But Mags is stepping forward. “I’m not with someone else.”

Alex blinks, trying not to assume the worst. “We were all at Dots the other night.”

Mags nods but waves a hand, clearly dismissing it. “Yeah, I saw you guys. But that was a first date. Kind of a dud, honestly. There won’t be a second.”

“Oh.” And suddenly the girl Mags is hovering over, working inside of, whispering dirty things to, is her again. Her knees go weak.

And something must show on her face, because Mags is taking one small step forward. “I’m not going to jump you again,” she says softly. “But if you ever want to go out sometime, like, to dinner, and see what happens, I’d like that.”

But Alex has been accidentally thinking about kissing her way across Mags’ shoulders for months now, ever since the dishwasher, so she shakes her head a little. “No. I mean, yes, _definitely_ yes, but…later.”

And Mags looks confused until Alex crosses the distance, reaching out and pulling her in by the toolbelt, kissing her until they both might faint.

* * *

Alex learns a lot, that summer. About bioengineering and working in the new xenobio lab.

About Lucy and James and Winn. About Kara, and how her sister is stronger than Alex ever knew, able to live in the same house as her crush and his beautiful girlfriend.

About construction. She helps Mags around the other house, learning how to install tile and paint walls and sand floors and order appliances.

And, up in her bedroom, with about five fans going during the heat wave, and then finally in the other house once the AC is installed, on an air mattress on the floor, about exactly what it’s like to be the girl in bed with Mags.

It’s a good summer.


End file.
